Being in the World

Reading over what I posted two days ago something new is revealed.  I wrote about the last time I couldn't leave—when I was stuck in New York during hurricane Sandy.  Now, we're all stuck—at home—or somewhere, on hiatus from normal, not sure when it will return, or how it will change us permanently.

The revelation is about the anxiety that gripped me in New York.  Being anxious made it impossible for me to touch things, to settle, to relax.  I was literally stuck in New York, but my anxiety made my world even smaller.  I became afraid to be.

It occurs to me, that there are a lot more people experiencing this quality of being hemmed in—maybe to distraction—maybe for the first time in their lives.  I've heard my friends tell me their shopping strategies based around the logistics of timing and available cleaning supplies.  Others remember suddenly not to touch handrails, or elevator buttons, or sink handles.  Things that were thoughtless manifestations of being (opening a door, hugging a friend, sharing a sip from a waterbottle) are on lockdown.

I have so much compassion for this experience.  The experience of the world getting smaller and smaller. The experience of working through multiple steps to perform simple actions—the new attention you have in washing your hands, putting the groceries away, opening the mail.

I've been practicing this kind of strategic heightened risk-assessment for years—I know exactly how to keep track of all the things that should be washed, or left in the sun, or thrown away.  And, I have had to adapt to this.  I've learned that I tend to over-assess for risk. So I began taking medication to help my mind relax its grip on problems that were impossible—that made it impossible for me to function.

But this is the kicker!  The thing that we're living through, right, now.  This is what my Anxiety is for! It knows how to scan the field for these dangers.  And it feels heartbreaking, to be honest.  I have had to teach myself infinitesimally small step by step that I am allowed to be in the world.

Even as feel my heart expand in understanding and love for everyone who's freaking out about touching something right now, anyone who's worried about germs for the first time in their life, and anyone who feels like their world has grown incredibly small...  I also know that you are allowed to be in the world.

And the world is big, and crazy, and full of actually scary things. And it's a good time, maybe the first good time—in my experience—to be a little anxious, to do a little over-assessing for risk.  But, I've learned something from my years interacting with anxiety.  It's important to do this as an act of love.  May all of your acts of sanitation, all of your second guesses and double-checks be acts of love.

In love and solidarity,

Christy

The Last Time I Couldn't Leave

It's March 30th, 2020 and I feel stuck. The last time I couldn't leave I was in New York—during Hurricane Sandy. That was also the last time I wrote on this blog. The difference now is that everyone is stuck, and we don't know how long it will last. So we're all adjusting—there isn't somewhere outside of this. About a week before New Mexico began shutting everything down I finished writing my final exams for graduate school. One of the essays I wrote was about creativity and healing—and I wrote about my experience of anxiety and panic while stuck in NYC, and how drawing helped me get through it. I want to share an excerpt from my paper here:

  I was caught in New York City during Hurricane Sandy. I started having intense anxiety that seemed to grip me more tightly every time another flight was canceled out of the city.  One day I went to a cafe in Brooklyn, about a block from my brother’s apartment. I saw a mouse poison trap, and it triggered deep panic. In fear of poison and contagion, I felt certain that the storm had washed poison into the streets that everything was contaminated. I felt like I couldn’t move, like I couldn’t touch anything for fear I would contaminate the world further. This is one of the ways my anxiety manifests itself.  Knowing this, I somehow forced myself to move, to enter the cafe, to order a coffee. And then I sat, uncomfortably, uncomfortable in the world, uncertain about how to be. I had my sketchbook and a journal, and I didn’t know what else I could do other than draw—and earnestly ask the universe for help. Taking care not to touch anything, I propped my journal on my knees, and I started to draw. I didn’t know what was going to come, but I kept asking for help, and then my asking turned into a prayer that my pencil would show me what I needed to know. 

I intentionally allowed my pencil to move against the page, holding a space for something—but refraining from any assumptions about what it would be.  So, in front of me, slowly, dark heavy lines of pencil built up, pricked by small round erasures of light. A night sky appeared, and then a mound which melted and morphed into the great decaying body of a bird, some of its bones exposed, feathers still clinging to dying flesh.  I kept looking and asking, and waiting, and drawing, and milk poured out of one eye socket into a pool under its breast. And then the sky started to pour into the bird’s skull, filling it with stars that in turn filtered into the milky white pouring out of the bird, into the craggy ground.  I worked, and worked and worked. My coffee cooled and I worked. I know now I was sinking deeply into a creative moment. I was lost to the world around me, completely engaged with the image that spoke to me, comforted me, told me about death and dying and starlight and earth, and wholeness, and space—space that’s distressingly distant and incredibly close.  When they started to close the cafe I found I could move again. I could touch things, and walk past the poison trap back to my brother’s apartment. My fear wasn’t gone, but something had changed itself in me. Perhaps, something had even started to germinate in me, an understanding that I knew was important—in the way that you can know a dream is important—but you can’t look too closely at it, or know too much too soon. 

This story is the story I feel well up in me when I think of creativity’s connection to healing.  I didn’t cure my anxiety, I didn’t solve anything, or take away my fear and panic. But I consciously sat with it, I allowed it to work through me, I allowed it to settle in me, and hopefully to start to teach me something.  And I wasn’t fine after the experience.  But I was calmer, and I felt deeply—almost giddily—connected to the drawing, I felt awe-filled and excited—like I had discovered a tender, delicate connection to another world, something unconscious in me, or in the world, something vastly wise.   Michael Lerner discusses the inevitability of death and illness—naming them as a part of the human condition. He wonders about a new perspective about them, “it’s a perspective that absolutely includes all the pain and all the anger and the sorrow, but the possibility is to open up whether there’s anything besides pain and sorrow, is there anything worthwhile in this very difficult thing that you’ve been given?” This question evokes the possibility that perhaps pain, difficulty, anger and sorrow are teachers.  They are unavoidably a part of our wholeness. Perhaps sitting with them is a doorway toward recognizing our wholeness.  

The Big Apple and my Come Hither Sweater

 It sure is something to be in the big city!  Here are David's windows! (We hoped the tape would keep the window glass together if it broke in the storm—didn't break! Even better.)

 David's roommate H put all the houseplants directly under the leaks in the ceiling—Saving water and protecting the floors!

Close up of plant and moisture.

 This is the house pet, Gerald (Jerry for short).  He's a very tiny turtle.  This barely qualifies as a descriptive photo.

Jerry's tank—I'm told that most visitors to New York don't get to see this thing in action!  I get the backstage tour...

The come hither sweater (remember the title?) is somewhat unrelated.  I'm still trying to work out just what the come-hither sweater would look like, and how it would beckon you.

Imperiled

Although it is not in the shape of Yemen (see this cool Cactus Tractor blog!) my trip to New York has certainly proved interesting.  To start things off right I missed my connecting flight in Phoenix—

 (I was uploading pictures to facebook)

—and therefore spent a good deal of time in the airport drawing and listening to the CNN news.  This was when I first heard the term "Frankenstorm." I joked with my new friend (an airport employee) about getting stuck on the East coast if I didn't miss my rescheduled flight to Newark, New Jersey.    We both laughed and I resumed drawing this (which airport friend totally didn't know what to say about):

Inspired by Brandon putting an apple seed in his pocket (knowingly) "for later."

Distracting as this was, I did manage to get on the plane to Newark.  Then I took the train to New York, learning as I did, that both New Jersey and New York have a Penn Station, which could be confusing, but luckily I am a suave and careful traveler who doesn't make these silly mistakes—multiple times in one day.  Finally I found David, my brother, in the city and ate a bunch of food after my fourteen hour fast (which really doesn't seem fast).

Yesterday David and I met up with Stephen Perry who enjoyed eating everyone's breakfast.

David, Stephen, Chiliquiles, French Toast, Pancakes (out of frame) and Syrup on Sunday Morning.

It's possible that Stephen was storing up calories for the impending storm.  That's right, Frankenstorm!  Due to Hurricane Sandy the metro's were closed last night, flights in and out were canceled (mine among them) and everyone bought toilet paper and water.  David, roommates and I hunkered down in their awesomely hobbity apartment and watched the Karate Kid.

Today we're still hunkering.  

Bird Goddess

Hyatt Reservoir, kinda.

I have a great adventure to write about here, but basically I saw some kick-ass trees growing out of a lake, and a bunch of cormorants too.  I'll try to write about it soon!

earth bike

Several feet above the ground.

Lift off.

I am overflowing with self expression. My floor is flooded with all the things I have ever tried to say. And the back of my spine, well, it's trying to remember where I shelved the books. Was it the 5th vertebrae, or in the attic under the lamp with the long orange extension chord?

In trying to examine the logistics of this sudden flood in relation to the history of critical drought I find myself creaking to such a stop. I think of kindling (all the pieces and ideas and thoughts that are pulling towards the same ecstatic fire) and I think of the breath that breaks them into flame (I have been drawing in breath for ever so long). It's almost as if I have stopped.

Is it like the series of photographs above? I wanted to keep going up and up and up. But there was a limit to my gravity-less-ness. I need something to hang on to. To convince you.

And maybe that's when the fire will start. The books will never be found, but they'll start to own their own space like a magnet or dark matter. An invisible weight. It cannot be explained but suddenly ---Ah!

self portrait

It's all happening.

Song, fire, fortitude. Resilience... Tacos. All in a days work. Amen

whawhawhite...sand

Milch de la Maquina!

Things I've been meaning to do for some time now: Part 3

Skydiver (TDFSTN Part 2)

Things I've meant to do for a while now, part 1.

Stealing the Saw

There have been many many months of nothing. Not nothing, per se. But nothing to say. Nothing to say to you. And now in the tiny ancient steps of a little old woman, slowly and discretely stepping the steps of a very slow floor polisher, I feel something.

Something under my feet. Something to be polished. Polished off, and replaced with action. Nourishment. Assimilation and alchemy.

The thing is, that in a children's book, you can't have him steal the saw.

Secret Time

It's 11:46, but I don't get that strange hopeful feeling I used to get at 11:46, or maybe it's later that that feeling starts. 2 or 3 am. It's the feeling of being up when no one else is and secretly doing important things.

You probably do something you wouldn't think of, you become incredibly intent.

I remember waking up before dawn, walking into a dim room and realizing I am the only one awake. I could do anything, and, discongruently, that feeling of all possibility ground down to a clear point of certain action. I take this newspaper, unfold it, refold it and put it back on the fireplace. There, relief. Because anything has been achieved. I follow my feet down the carpeted hall back to bed.

And once, late, late! The hours have passed and passed. I am inventing in a gallery with Bethany. I have observed our work as the hours passed and now at 3 in the morning I get the feeling of "secret time." Although I am not alone, it is late enough that I am alone regardless. The certainty of action I feel (that anything turned into something clear and necessary) distills a story that I write down. This story is intentional work that becomes apparent all on it's own. Because of it's natural ascension no listing or forcing parts is required. It is not hard work, it's of my soul. It requires me and I require it.

Like a red letter on a silver tray.

I have been eating...

...quite a lot of spinach. Right now I'm at the coffee shop called Winning eating more of the spinach and drinking my second cup of coffee in two weeks. I am sitting by the succulents and spikulents in the windowulents. It is my second favorite table, it is small and round with two small round chairs.

Art

I am going to put up art in here in March! March.
I am going to Oregon in December. December!
It is November, November? November.

It is November

I feel no need to give anyone any advice. Sometimes someone will present a problem like "I can't eat gluten" and I will think of several things that don't have gluten in them and happily list them over several months. "eggs!... dandy blend!... this cookie!" But it's not really advice. You are not required to eat any of these things.

"You are not required to eat any of these things"

These are some things I overheard: "the Haitian sensation!" "the Rio Grande clams!" These are some things from a really lovely evening: shocking windows, a few goosebumps, arnica, sequins under swaying lights, flows following folds flocking, and warmth finally. And falling asleep.

the Haitian Sensation.

My roommate Stephen Perry is about

to go on tour...

(this is the creepy image I made him for a t-shirt). Hope he uses it!

Happiness

My time with Americorps is over. It is sad in a reminiscent way but now I can lobby again, and make enough money not to qualify for food stamps... exciting times! I've stumbled into two new jobs, and although I searched fruitlessly and anxiously for months prior to finding them nothing could have been easier or more pleasant than the stumbling that happened just as my Americorps term came to an end.

With my first employer I share a name, a hometown, a birthday and the characteristic of having unusually bumpy thumbnails-- I believe that these coincidences helped me get the job at the herb store, that and my blind confidence.

For my second job I answered a craigslist add that described my skills with ridiculous precision. The one odd skill was "willingness to learn to handle a variety of animals, and show them to other people." The advertisement--although exact, never said just what the job was. I was asked for an interview and directed to the zoo. My interview was conducted amidst peacocks. I interpreted this as a good sign. I was asked back for a second interview and then offered the job-- which I now know is to travel around to schools in Albuquerque in a van that converts into a miniature museum (complete with plants and animals) that describes the ecosystems through which the Rio Grande travels. My particular responsibilities are to create and administer fun art projects.

So, Americorps has ended and new times are beginning in the desert. Just now it is raining and I am glad.